Approaching Website Analytics (pt 2)

• by Dan Bailey

(continued from previous post, http://jakeaull.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/approaching-website-analytics/ )

For the most fruitful web analytics, I recommend identifying website measurement strategies for both brand awareness and sales-lead development (with conversion and retention). For growth in brand awareness, of course certain metrics can be very revealing, such as change in quantity of first-time unique visitors (especially when coupled with length of session or pageviews by session). For sales-lead development, clickstream analysis and visitor loyalty/stickyness (return visits) can be instrumental along with adandonment and conversion metrics (for more on such approaches, I recommend Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master by Farris, Bendle, Pfeifer and Reibstein). Retention can be improved by testing customer rewards programs on the site. Of course even more literal customer-specific data can be obtained by incenting visitors to take website surveys.

Web Analytics 2.0 author Avinash Kaushik outlines measurement strategy
around the Ws as follows:
Clickstream (The What)
|
Multiple Outcomes Analysis (The How Much)
|
Experimentation & Testing (The Why)
|
Voice of Customer
|
Competitive Intelligence (The What Else)
|
Insights
(http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2009/09/web-analytics-books.html):

On a most basic level, if a product promotional campaign has achieved
growth in brand awareness, that should be measurable on all sites/pages
pertaining to that product brand. An increase in search results for
that brandname should be apparent. So a website can be designed to
best empower this web traffic and easily, clearly reveal (via web
analytics) brand-level audience interest. Understanding this can then
be assessed along with, and related to, customer development and sales
conversion analytics in the marketing funnel. Optimal measurement strategies can even identify (and make profitable) “butterfuly” segments; customers who buy once without intent/need for repeat purchase (see aforementioned Marketing Metrics source).

The 21st century has proven that consumers who are interested in a brand or product go online to research the item. How well those research efforts are understood, fueled, developed and measured is the challenge of today’s web marketer.

– Jake Aull, www.zenofbrand.com